Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

It's pretty simple. The setting has guns, lots of em. Players need to be in an environment with those guns and actually not be told "combat encounters are inadvisable" as combat and death are part of a cyberpunk setting. It's a world of struggle and conflict. They need to be able to do this and enjoy it without fear of instant death and they need to be able to do this as even newer players than me AND we need to be able to do this without having to evoke increasingly esoteric rules to compensate for other problems like a rifle doing 5d6 damage.

I mean, I genuinely don't understand how you're envisioning this cyberpunk setting where getting shot with a rifle is very unlikely to make a baseline person - not a battle cyborg or whatever, just somebody - have a chance to pass out. Where a pistol literally can't put someone down for more than a few seconds. Combat and death as part of a cyberpunk setting tend to be fast and rich in instant kills in all the relevant media I can think of, to the point that you'd find GURPS lethality not coming close to the stories.

I can't really argue about it usefully, though.